Giving Up or Taking On - The Discipline is the Same

For most of my ministry, in fact since I was a kid, my family members and I have had the practice of “giving something up for Lent.” My choices of things to give up have gone from the sublime to the ridiculous, from incidental practices to giving up addictions.
One year I gave up drinking Cokes. That was a tough year. One year I gave up chocolate - yeah, cold turkey! One year Dawn and I both gave up pizza. Can you imaging going 40 days without your regular Friday night dinner? One year I gave up coffee, and that was hard. And once, in a stroke of true bravery, I gave up all caffeine. The most difficult 40 days of my life.
One year, I gave up 10 pounds! That was intentional, a planned effort to eat less and work out — some.
But there have also been a few years when I added something instead — and it wasn’t food! I added the spiritual discipline of praying on my knees in the sanctuary every single day of Lent.
Whether you have the habit of giving something up for Lent, or taking on some additional spiritual discipline, the purpose and the practice is the same. It is to give us the opportunity to work on, to practice and to show to ourselves that we are capable of becoming more spiritual, more self-disciplined than we thought we actually could be.
Lent traditionally has been a season of fasting. Jesus fasted for 40 days in the wilderness after his baptism. Fasts, in the strictest sense, are periods of not eating regular food. You maintain taking in water and juices and other liquids to keep yourself hydrated, like Gatorade, but you refrain from eating solid food. On some fasts, you can have only natural foods such as fruits and nuts, things you could pick and eat, but no prepared, cooked or processed foods.
The monks of the Middle Ages really took fasting to a whole new level. That is when fasting during Lent became a widely practiced discipline. And as a tidbit of trivia, you typically end a fast in the morning after the last day of your fast. So the first meal after the fast, the meal that would “break” the fast became known to this day as breakfast.
Some people think fasting, or giving things up for Lent sounds too “Catholic”. Some have never heard of giving things up for Lent. Some have no idea what Lent is.
I was talking to Michael Raymond, the owner of Raymond Funeral Services on Ash Wednesday, and he had a big black smudge on his forehead. He had gone to 8 o’clock mass and had the ashes placed on his forehead. He remarked how sad it is “how few people have any sense that this day is Ash Wednesday or why we do this.”
Lent starts on Ash Wednesday and runs for six and a half weeks to Holy Saturday. Lent and our fasts are broken on Easter, when the tomb is broken open and Jesus is raised.
Lent is a time to consider the sacrifice that Jesus made for us on the cross, how he suffered and how much he loves us, that he would willingly die in our place. We give things up, or “sacrifice” things we like during Lent, to remind us of the sacrifice Jesus made on our behalf.
I want to encourage you to make Lent special in some particular way. Whether you give up certain foods, like meat on Fridays, or ice cream, or whether you give up activities like television or Wii;, or whether you take on a new prayer or Bible reading practice during these 40 days, I hope you will take seriously the need to reflect upon all that Jesus has done for you personally. Be grateful for his sacrifice, and then see what you might do during Lent to help you remember the importance of this season, spiritually. I pray you will grow in your faith, and grow in your appreciation for the sacrifice Jesus made for you, during this Lenten season. +